Martin Stráník Sends Story of Two Worlds (V15)

Czech climber Martin Stráník polished off Dave Graham’s V15 test-piece The Story of Two Worlds in Cresciano, Switzerland—in five days.

Story of Two Worlds—first climbed by Graham in 2005—is the low/sit start to The Dagger (V13/14). “It adds a six move V12 into The Dagger,” Carlo Traversi, who climbed Story of Two Worlds in 2013, explained in an interview with Rock and Ice: “But The Dagger is a fairly involved, long problem to begin with. So simply adding moves really takes things up a notch.”

It took five years for the boulder problem to see a second ascent, from Dai Koyamada in May 2010.

Stráník started with The Dagger and cruised it in two days. “After I tried the first moves of Story,” he tells ukclimbing.com. “[I] thought that I would be able to make a fast ascent, but temperature was not on my side...Every day I woke up early in the morning to give some serious attempts, but I wasn't even close.”

Cool weather moved in on Tuesday, November 17, and made the boulder problem “much easier,” says Stráník, who finally linked all the moves and claimed its 11th known ascent.

“Finally I was lucky to send it,” he tells ukclimbing.com. “I think that it is a soft 8C [V15] right now with all the beta there is, but still harder than 8B+ [V14].”